In all, five telecom companies - Bharti Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, Videocon and Telenor-promoted Telewings will compete for GSM spectrum in 1800 Mhz band in the auction scheduled to start on November 12.
A Department of Telecom (DoT) statement said, the auction has to be completed by January 11 as directed by the Supreme Court, which had earlier cancelled 122 telecom licences.
The government hopes to raise Rs 40,000 crore and levy other charges on the airwaves auctioned.
However, the government suffered a setback when Tata Teleservices and Videocon dropped out of the race for CDMA spectrum, leaving no bidders for the 800 Mhz band. This has dashed the government’s hopes of earning at least Rs 19,000 crore from the auction.
Eligibility points
According to the list of final bidders released by DoT, Aditya Birla-promoted Idea Cellular has maximum eligibility points (1,594), which enables it to bid for airwaves in the highest number of telecom circles.
Eligibility points have been decided according to the earnest money deposited with DoT by players.
Idea is followed by Telewings Communications promoted by Telenor (1,332 eligibility points), Videocon (788) and Vodafone (276).
Bharti Airtel deposited the least earnest money, which indicates that the telecom major will bid in selected circles.
Published 06 November 2012, 18:42 IST